Responsibility to the Truth

Like Chris, I was also quite moved by Orwell's dedication to conveying the truth about the Spanish Civil War and, for that matter, about war in general. It seems one of the main purposes that Orwell wrote Homage to Catalonia was to ensure that unaware (whether intentionally or not) people are enlightened on the reality of war, of the corruption that was so toxic in this particular one, and of the implications that resulted from such blemishing of the truth.  

Orwell’s dedication to the truth is also conveyed in the organization of the book. He recounts the way he came to understand the truth of the war (and its corrupt politics) in the order that he actually experienced it.

Early in the book, as he writes continually of his feelings of boredom and “nothing happening,” he also writes of his early, ignorant thoughts:

“I did not realize that there were serious differences between the political parties ... my attitude always was, ‘Why can’t we drop all this political nonsense and get on with the war?’ This of course was the correct ‘anti-Fascist’ attitude which had been carefully disseminated by the English newspapers, largely in order to prevent people from grasping the real nature of the struggle” (47).  

This is one of the first times that Orwell mentions the issue of propaganda, of gaining power by controlling the news. Later he mentions the “horrible atmosphere of suspicion” and the “whispering that everyone else was a spy of the Communists” that begins to consume Spain, and we begin to understand the absurdity of this war as Orwell came to understand it (140).

By chapter eleven we’re fully immersed in Orwell’s determination to unveil the truth that’s been obscured by propaganda, corruption, and lies. In fact, he clearly declares his intentions for chapter eleven at the end of chapter ten. He writes, “So much political capital has been made out of the Barcelona fighting that it is important to try and get a balanced viewed of it ... It is a horrible thing to have to enter into the details of inter-party polemics; it is like diving into a cesspool. But it is necessary to try and establish the truth, so far as it is possible. This squalid brawl in a distant city is more important than might appear at first sight” (149).

He does an enormous job of detailing those inter-party polemics in chapter eleven, and of articulating the important fact that the “accusation of espionage against the P.O.U.M. rested solely upon articles in the Communist Press and the activities of the Communist-controlled secret police” (175). It’s distressing (and frustrating, of course) to think that all of those men were wrongfully jailed and unable to prove their innocence, and that most were executed in prison.

Finally, we come to the end of the book and read of Orwell’s thoughts at the end of his time in the war. He writes, “What angers one about a death like this is it utter pointlessness. To be killed in battle—yes, that is what one expects; but to be flung in jail not even for any imaginary offence, but simply owing to dull blind spite, and then left to die in solitude—that is a different matter. I fail to see how this kind of thing—and it is not as though Smillie’s case were exceptional—brought victory any nearer (217).

We're left with Orwell’s fear of widespread oblivion and his call to wake the world. He writes that the England of his childhood is “all sleeping the deep, deep sleep of England, from which [he] sometimes fear[s] that we shall never wake till we are jerked out of it by the roar of bombs” (232). It’s clear that this fear drove Orwell to write this book. He has successfully passed that fear of the world’s ignorance on to me.

(Some other thoughts:

There are many other parts of the book I was both charmed and intrigued by: the description of the uniquely generous and often humorous and frustrating Spanish people (especially the idea of putting everything off until “mañana”; in Miami, we call it “running on Cuban time”); the descriptions of setting in the trenches and in Barcelona; Orwell’s feelings of wanting to stay in Spain despite the need to flee after being discharged, and the way he describes the ignorant air of England.)